


Le Mécène

by intravenusann



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: A mystery, Credence Barebone-centric, Fascist Fucks Getting What They Deserve, Gen, Scars, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 19:22:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15150119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intravenusann/pseuds/intravenusann
Summary: The past decade of Credence’s life has been one of incredible comforts. He has been frustrated only by the mystery of his benefactor. Who would care so much about what luxuries Credence Barebone has in his life?





	Le Mécène

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this prompt from [fantasticbeastsprompts](https://fantasticbeastsprompts.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr: after the events of the movie, the real Graves comes to check on Credence, to speak with him and see if he’s okay, only to find that Credence - betrayed and untrusting - no longer wants anything to do with him. so, Graves keeps an eye on him from a distance. helps and protects him from afar, does small things to make Credence’s life easier, secretly retaliates against anyone that tries to hurt him. whether he ever reveals himself, or whether Credence comes around, is up to you.
> 
> Warning: Percy is ugly on the outside and Credence is ugly on the inside; no one kisses. There is no kissing.

Past the quays of Le Havre, a wind-battered house sits so near to the edge of a cliff that it seems to dare God and Heaven to knock it into the Channel. The few who sail past and spot it joke that the devil must live there — surely he sits along the falaises and stirs the seas with his pitchfork. 

A man with long blond hair tied up into a knot at the nape of his neck adjusts his robes as he approaches the house. He does not move as though he fears the devil so much as the wind tearing open a recently stitched seam along his sleeve. He knocks on the door.

The woman who answers stands head and shoulders beneath him, with broad shoulders and thick arms that she crosses over her chest. The color of her skin says less about her parentage than the sharpness of her teeth.

“Ça va?”

The man speaks French poorly, “Good morning, Madame! I am here to see Mr. Credence Barebone. He has hired me.”

“Vraiment,” she says, with a smile full of knives.

She steps away, leaving the door open. The man walks into the house, finding it lavishly decorated in a style sixty years out of date. Not a speck of dust or grain of sand can be seen. The man lifts his feet one at a time and spells away the dirt on his shoes with a few whispered words.

“Credence!” the woman shouts at the stairs. “There is a strange man here who says you're his employer!”

“Oh,” the man says, embarrassed.

Credence Barebone descends the stairs dressed like a muggle, with his hair cut short as a soldier.

“Who are you?” he asks the man.

“Severin Levi,” the man says. He switches his book bag to his left hand and extends his right for a handshake.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Monsieur Barebone, after all our correspondence,” Severin says.

“I’ve never written to you,” Credence says. His hands form fists at his sides. He looks pulled tight, with the muscles in his jaw working nervously.

“You have?” Severin says, voice wavering. He drops his hand and begins to open the book bag. From it, he draws a stack of letters.

“I received your letters via New York, which seemed unusual since you’re just across the Channel, but you write like an American so I assumed,” Severin says.

He holds the letters out so that Credence can take them. The man stands taller than Severin and just as thin, but with angles where Severin is all long lines. The stiff cut of his suit certainly adds to the severity of his looks. He does not snatch the letters from Severin’s hands, despite the look of restrained fury on his face. Rather, he moves very carefully, with absolute economy to his motions as he opens the first letter and reads it.

“This is not my writing,” he says.

“Ah,” Severin says. “I apologize Monsieur Barebone. But I… someone has already paid my stipend for this month.”

Credence looks at him without lifting his chin. “What do you want me to do about that, Mr. Levi?”

“Nothing!” Severin says. “Nothing at all! You don’t need to do a thing, Monsieur Barebone. But if you… if you were looking for a tutor in charms and potions, by chance.”

He lifts his hands, with his heavy book bag dangling in the air at his side.

The sharp-toothed woman standing behind Credence steps closer to him and gestures for him to lean down. She whispers into his ear, things that Severin does not hear. He lowers his hands and shifts his bag from the left to the right. 

“You’ll need a place to stay,” Credence says. “Won’t you?”

“Oh, you’ve paid me — or, well, someone has paid me plenty, I’m sure I can stay in the city, Monsieur Barebone, and just pop over here when you need me.”

The woman huffs what might be a laugh at Credence’s side.

“Adva says you may stay here if you like,” Credence says. “Save the stipend I didn’t pay you for other things.”

Despite the strange circumstances of an employer who doesn’t know he is one, a sublime look passes over Severin’s face as he thinks of all the books he would be able to buy with the half of his stipend he was prepared to pay in rent.

“You’re sure?” Severin asks.

“My house has space to fit more than one skinny, English-speaking witch,” the woman says.

At the end of the month, an owl arrives from London with another stipend for Mr. Severin Levi. It claims to be from Credence Barebone, but the man himself is there when it arrives.

“This seems a bit ridiculous,” Severin says as he offers the tawny owl one of the mice that Adva catches in the attic.

“I agree,” Credence tells him.

Over the next few years, as Le Havre suffers as much as any other city from the upheavals of the industrial world, other people come to the weathered house on the cliff asking after Monsieur Barebone from New York — a Belgian wand-maker, an Italian tailor, even the chief examiner from Beauxbatons. Each of them, like Severin, claims to have been paid already, and Adva discourages Credence from sending any of them away.

“Isn’t he curious about who is pretending to be him?” Severin asks her, very quietly. The roar of the waves in the distance covers his voice.

“Is he not curious about everything?” she asks.

Severin learns over time that he is only a bit older than Credence, but Adva has two and a half decades on the both of them. Old enough to be his mother, she does not treat him like a child. She cuts her wiry hair short and swims naked in the Channel, even in the winter. She is not like any witch — nay, any creature at all — that he has ever met. And neither, really, is Credence.

Credence grows his hair out, like a wizard, but never wears the robes the Italian tailor spent a week making. Some days, he braids his own hair into pigtails and tucks each braid into the other. On these days, he thinks of the girl he called a sister and how he once plaited her hair this same way. It is the only time that he wishes he could return across the sea. He hopes that Modesty Barebone is alive and safe somewhere in the world.

The only other visitors that Credence receives — Newt Scamander and the two Goldstein sisters — hardly seem to have the funds to accomplish such an expensive ruse. They sit around Adva’s kitchen wondering aloud who could have funded Credence’s replacement wand. Who would even know it had been shattered in an incident last May?

“I did mention it in a letter to my brother,” Newt says, making eye contact with the knots in the wood of the kitchen table.

“Your brother’s never even met Credence,” Tina says.

“And he sure don’t live in New York,” Queenie says. She has baked cod into a pastry dough seasoned with thyme and rosemary from Adva’s garden.

Severin likes Newt, though they were years apart in school and Newt was a Hufflepuff. He stays up all night with Credence’s friends, helping Newt explain in vivid detail why Hogwarts is the superior institution to Ilvermorny in every imaginable way.

“I wonder,” Adva says in the morning, “what Credence thinks of your stories about the schools he could never attend.”

“Oh,” Severin says. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think of that.”

“No,” Adva says. “You are very smart, but often you do not think.”

“Did it bother you?” he asks. “I would hate to have upset you.”

“I am not like Credence,” she says, her voice shaped as much by her accent as her knife-like teeth.

Severin nods. “But you too… Beauxbatons doesn’t accept students like you and — and Credence.”

“No,” she says, looking out the window at the water. “But what do I have to be jealous of? Anyone can have books and wands.”

All it takes to acquire books and wands is money, everyone knows that.

Every year since she was nine-years-old, Modesty Barebone has met with a round-faced woman with heavy eyebrows who says her name is Catherine Clifford. It was as easy for Modesty to accept this woman as it was to accept every other stranger who has taken her in. 

The house where she was born in the Bronx has long been empty. The church where she was raised, knocked flat.

She goes with Mrs. Clifford to a tall house outside Boston.

“I have a girl your age,” Mrs. Clifford said the first time they met.

By her third year at Ilvermorny, when she cuts her hair short and learns to ride a broom without falling off, Modesty knows that someone sends money to Mrs. Clifford for her care. She knows because the money doesn’t go to little Jennie, who is in the same year as Modesty. Modesty has a much nicer broom, therefore, and a much nicer wand, both of which she is not allowed to bring home during the summer.

“Please, if you are going to provide for me,” Modesty writes in a letter, “do the same for those around me. I have not done anything to deserve this treatment. Also, I should like to meet you.”

She gives the letter to Mrs. Clifford when they meet during the summer and asks her to please send it to whoever sends the money. 

“How do you know about that?” Mrs. Clifford asks, as if Modesty is too shrewd.

Only upon her graduation from Ilvermorny, does Modesty receive a reply to the letters she writes for Mrs. Clifford to forward after every school holiday.

“You are such a clever witch,” the reply says. “I think we shall meet someday.”

“Thank you,” she answers to an address in New York. “I would like that. I begin my internship this year. Perhaps we might have coffee when I am not at work.”

The next year, while Modesty begins her work for the Magical Congress, Newt Scamander sends word across the Channel of a job with the Ministry. Credence goes to London. Severin stays in France, in the house on the cliffs outside Le Havre.

On the way to London, Credence stops in Dorset just across the Channel to visit Mrs. Scamander, mother of Newton and Theseus. She, old enough nearly to be the mother of his mother, opens her arms to Credence and draws him down until his patrician nose is all but buried in the red-blond curls of her long hair.

“You almost look like a proper wizard,” she says, stroking his braided hair. “Have you thought about growing a beard?”

She has only a few strands of silver in her hair, but her age is all in her hands. Outside with her prized Hippogriffs most of the day, her skin folds like creased paper. 

“Are you staying?” she asks him. “You can help me with the morning charms. Can’t have any muggles seeing the darlings and causing a panic.”

Credence helps her carry buckets of fish out to the barn, where they are greeted by the impatient stamp of hooves and flutter of wings. A dappled grey female reaches out and catches Credence’s shoulder lightly with her beak, only to be scolded by Mrs. Scamander.

“It’s so nice to have you around,” she says. “Only need to make one trip.”

“I’m happy to help,” he tells her. And he is. The charm to disguise the hippogriffs as horses is simple. He can cast it while carrying on a conversation about Newt’s comings and goings in France.

“The next time you write him,” Mrs. Scamander says, “tell him he needs to visit more often.”

“He’s visiting tonight, isn’t he?” Credence asks.

“Still, you tell him,” she says, nodding.

As they carry the empty buckets back to the shed, Mrs. Scamander asks, “Do you remember the first time you visited?”

“Yes,” Credence says.

“Can you believe that was ten years ago?” she says.

“More than that,” Credence says.

“What?” she asks. “Certainly not more than ten.”

And he does not argue, though it will be twelve years in a matter of months.

“Who was the man that came out to see you?” she asks. “Wasn’t he an American?”

“Graves,” he says. 

“Oh yes!” she says, snapping her fingers. “He caused quite a scene with you and then wouldn’t even come into the house for tea.”

“Because I told him that if he stayed, I’d kill him,” Credence tells her, as though he were reporting on the weather or some bit of news about Italy signing another agreement with Japan.

“Did you now?” Mrs. Scamander says. She sets a bucket down when she laughs, for fear of dropping it. Her hand covers her mouth but not the deep creases around her green eyes.

Credence nods without looking at her. “I did.”

“Well, you were quite young at the time,” she says. “How old were you?”

“Twenty-three I believe,” he says.

She laughs again and only just manages to get into the shed without getting scales and blood all over her dress. Each of them scourgifies the buckets they carried until the whole stack shines. Mrs. Scamander rinses her hands in the shed sink, then moves aside to allow Credence the chance to wash up.

“You were practically a schoolboy,” she says.

“I was very angry back then,” he says. 

“Certainly not,” Mrs. Scamander says, patting his shoulder. “You were not angry, dear. You were afraid, like the cats in the barn rafters are afraid. All they know is that they must avoid the claws of my darlings and make dinner out of the shrews in the garden.”

Her touch lingers against his back as he shakes the water off his hands and rolls down his sleeves.

“Newt always loved those cats,” she says. “He was the only one who could even look at them without them running away. I knew someday he’d bring someone like you home with him.”

She smiles at him.

“That business with that Graves fellow was quite unseemly wasn’t it,” she says. “I remember Newt telling me, and his old teacher — that dear fellow had to become involved.”

“Yes,” Credence says.

When he nods his head again, his shoulders bow until his braid slips down the side of his neck and falls against the front of his shirt. He does not look up, his hands resting on the edge of the shed’s sink.

“I shouldn’t have been cruel to him,” he says. 

“Nonsense, you weren’t cruel to him,” she says. 

“I’m afraid I was,” Credence insists.

“The barn cats aren’t being cruel when they swipe at the hooves threatening to stomp their tails,” Mrs. Scamander says. “And how does the cat know what the hippogriff will do? All they see is hooves and claws and beaks.”

With that, she turns and goes out of the shed. When Credence eventually follows, he walks with his hands curled into fists.

“You know,” she says. “Theseus had a friend by the name of Graves after the war. I wonder if they’re related. Perhaps he could guide you toward a reconciliation with your fellow.”

“I doubt it,” Credence says. “I am not the sort for reconciliation.”

“Still a barn cat even after all those years sunning your belly on the beach in France,” Mrs. Scamander says. She smiles at him so that he knows she is only teasing, but it strikes closer to the truth than he would like.

“My education has been so dull in comparison to yours,” she says as she leads him into the kitchen. “You’ve got to teach me some of your French. And what is that other language you said you can speak?”

“Yiddish,” Credence says. “But not very much. Severin tried to teach me more, but he was awful at languages.”

“What a shame,” Mrs. Scamander says. “Tell me something in Yiddish.”

He laughs softly, but certainly attempts.

That night, Mrs. Scamander cooks dinner for her youngest son and his dark-haired friend. After the sun has set, she sits at her desk and writes to her older son while pretending that she does not hear Newt and Credence sneaking out into the dark. She hears her son’s voice whispering about doxies as he goes past the door to her study.

In the morning, her barn owl named Banshee takes the letter out to London. The next morning begins with Theseus Scamander’s eagle owl, who is quite getting on in years, departing his Sussex home for the other side of the Atlantic.

At the end of the week, Mrs. Scamander sees her youngest son out the door with Credence Barebone trailing behind him with both their bags. She smiles and does not shed a single tear. Only once she has shut the door and seen them disappear in a ripple of magic, does she allow herself to cry. It would be easy to believe that Credence has only left the French coast because of a job in London. It would be so comforting to believe that Theseus is always in the city and Newton always away from it because of their work.

But Mrs. Scamander’s boys already ran off to join one war. She reads the papers. Even the muggles have riots these days, just as violent as the sort that broke out at the Leaky Cauldron just last week. In the last ten years, she’s had to stop breeding her darlings because not even England’s wealthiest families have had those sorts of funds. She may not be as educated as her children, but she was always a clever witch. If she weren’t, perhaps Newt and Theseus wouldn’t be so clever themselves.

Alone in her home, Mrs. Scamander leans against the door and feels the claws of war at her throat.

In London, Credence settles into a room down the street from Newt. He longs for Severin’s quiet companionship and Adva’s early morning cooking, but he does not miss the loneliness of that wind-swept house. London is crowded, dusted over with coal smoke, and reeking of garbage. He adores it. On his lunch breaks, Credence walks from the Ministry building into the streets and eats standing outside even in the middle of winter.

When Newt looks askance at his chaffed cheeks, he says, “It's bracing.”

“Tina says that,” Newt tells him. He blinks and looks down at his work. He ought to be reviewing paperwork, but Credence can see one of his monogrammed notebooks peeking out from under a hastily arranged file.

“Because she's right,” Credence says as he hangs up his coat by hand.

“She usually is,” Newt says, nodding. He smiles down at the file he pretends to be working on, a softly tilted smile that means more than any of the fake, toothy things he uses for official interviews and visa screenings.

Credence offers Newt the privacy of looking away, then, and going to his own desk.

“Do you remember the first week I spent in England?” Credence asks. “Before you took me to the continent.”

Newt lifts his head with a hum. 

“What about it?” he asks.

“Nothing specifically,” Credence says. “Your mother asked me about it when I was visiting her.”

“Did she?” Newt’s voice sounds distant.

“Yes,” he says. “About Mr. Graves.”

“Who?” Newt asks. 

In another beat, “Ah, wait, yes — wait, really?”

Credence does not look over his shoulder, but Newt watches his back from the vantage point of his desk as though it were a blind at the edge of a lake and Credence was a particularly shy kelpie with a fisherman’s net caught around its hooves.

“Yes,” Credence says.

“I heard he’s been rather involved in the effort — at a distance, of course,” Newt says.

“Understandable,” Credence says. His hands press flat against his desk as he reviews a stack of complaint letters sent to the office.

“Seraphina says he’s practically bankrupting himself for it,” Newt tells him.

“Seraphina?” Credence asks.

Newt opens his mouth once and then closes it. He swallows.

“You might recognize her if you saw her,” he says. “Or maybe you wouldn’t, it hardly matters at this point.”

He leans over his desk. “Does it?”

“Not really,” Credence says, without moving.

“She and I write to each other,” Newt admits. “Especially about the ongoing effort.”

Now Credence moves just slightly: a nod. He has total economy with his motions as he moves from letter to letter and translates the handwritten complaints of the Ministry’s citizenry into the typed forms created for the office.

For the rest of the afternoon, Newt expects him to say that name again. When Credence does nothing more than invite him out for drinks, he doesn’t know whether he feels relief or not. 

The warmth of whiskey in their faces, the two of them walk home together since it is in the same block. They speak easily of Tina Goldstein, one of the best loved topics of their friendship. More than gossip, Newt uses broad gestures of his hands to recount a battle in Turin where she faced three wizards at once. Drunk, Credence laughs and laughs. His breath hangs in the air like clouds. By the time he falls into bed, Credence’s throat hurts from laughing and drinking.

“The wages of sin,” he croaks at the dark of his room.

When Credence Barebone uses the wrong word in conversation or does not know some obvious fact about England’s illustrious wizarding history, most people shrug their shoulders. Americans, they say. The gaps in his knowledge and the strange idiosyncrasies of his magic are easily excused by his accent. A French education? Really, what can be expected.

In this country, there was never a Scourer witch so desperate to survive her crimes that she buried herself in the Barebone name. No hatred festers in the English Barebones, who gained the name through a half-blood marriage a few generations ago. 

In the Ministry of Magic’s England, those children unfortunate enough to develop an Obscurus die in orphanages or their parents’ attics.  The deaths of squibs rarely merit investigation.

Credence Barebone lives his first month in London quite comfortably, for all that it is winter. He saves a portion of his wages each week in an envelope — to pay his rent. Though he is well over thirty, this will be his first proper experience with such things. The financial entanglements of his youth, like most things from that age, are best forgotten.

He takes the envelope to his landlord on the first floor before he goes to work.

“I already got yours, Barebone,” she says, leaning against her door frame.

Credence blinks and looks at the envelope in his hands. Strange phenomena seems to follow him like a grim. 

“Seemed odd that you’d send it by owl, you know?” she says. “But I don’t know how they do things in America. You ain’t gotta pay three months all at once, either, but I ain’t complaining.”

Credence nods his head.

“You’re a strange one, Barebone,” she says with a smile. “But I don’t mind it at all.”

When Credence arrives at the office and hangs up his coat, he says, “They’ve found me.”

Newt’s eyes widen. 

“My benefactor,” Credence explains, because there are too many “theys” in his tangled life.

“Ah,” Newt says, brushing his quill against his mouth.

“They’ve paid three months of my rent,” he says. “So I suppose I ought to pay for dinner tonight.”

He hopes for at least a fake, toothy smile from Newt, but does not get any such thing.

“I should write to Tina,” Credence says.

“Yes,” Newt says. “Write to Tina. Perhaps she can find more this time.”

“I wish it was her,” Credence says.

“If it were, I’m sure she wouldn’t keep it a secret all these years,” Newt offers, without regard for how unhelpful his observation is.

“Twelve years,” Credence says, turning to his desk. “What sort of person…”

Of course, the job is not merely citizen complaints about creatures. But those complaints, to a keen eye, show the movements of dark magics and strange things in this corner of the world. Newt has the resources through this office to gather reports from the continent — at least those offices still willing to share information with the Ministry. Trafficked creatures and their parts reveal supply lines flowing like arteries toward a terrible heart.

Newton Scamander, so unassuming in the shadow of his bearded brother, and his strange American friend do not raise any suspicions at all to the work they are actually doing. At best, they are harmless oddities. At worst? They are a pair of annoyances who always have an excuse as to why paperwork hasn’t been filed.

“Oh, I didn’t know,” a man repeats in his best approximation of an American accent, pitched up an octave to belittle his target. But Credence is a difficult man to mock. He knows better than most that cruel people want a reaction more than anything. He has had three decades of practice in giving no such thing.

Over the next few weeks, Credence also demonstrates that he has ten years of practice learning wandless jinxes from the daughter of an Algerian wizard and an Havraise with a scaled tail. 

“I swear, Barebone, you’re stupider than a squib,” the man says, and quite soon after a gallon of the Thames comes pouring out of his nose.

The closest to a reaction might be the slight twist at the corner of Credence’s mouth.

But of course, that man has friends — he went to Hogwarts and works with his schoolmates, the boys with whom he played Quidditch and stayed through detentions. What does Credence have? In London, there’s only Newt.

Every Sunday, Piers Thornewick goes for tea with a pair of old friends, some office juniors and his fiancée — if she is available, what with her mother coming up in years. The Tassle’s house has a certain enthusiastic, middle-class charm without the dour paintings and taxidermied beasts so beloved by some upper-crust, pureblood families. The Tassle girls work for their mother and always tuck Piers and his friends away in some corner where they can argue about which club’s beater has the best chances this year and it won't disrupt the other customers. They rarely order a set, but Piers finds it gives him an air of sophistication to order a la carte — even if the cart is self-propelled these days. 

When a man appears at the door not in Ministry robes, but a worn-out coat with cuffs that must have once been fashionable and possibly white, he looks as out of place as a stuffed raven might.

“Please direct me to the Thornewick table,” he tells Miss Yunnan Tassle.

“Sir, I'm not sure —,” she begins to say.

“I'm sure I can find it myself then,” he says. “Thank you.”

He sweeps past her easily and stomps through the central room of the house. Patrons stop their conversations and turn to gawk at the man with his greying hair and unkempt beard, both of which are neither long nor short enough to be fashionable. There is a smell about him of cheap cigars and old books that lingers behind, strong enough to turn at least one woman off of the finger sandwich she has just bitten into.

Piers’ fiancée looks up first when the strange man storms into their private corner. The man himself would not have noticed had she not griped his hand suddenly and with force.

“What is is Lucibelle?” Piers asks. The rest of the table begins to turn their faces towards the ugly, old man in the ragged coat.

The stranger draws a long ebony wand from his pocket. The tarnished silver in his hand draws attention to the scratches and repairs along its length. When he makes use of it, a silencing charm settles over the room so thickly it makes the whole group’s ears pop. 

“I’d like to speak with Mr. Thornewick,” the stranger says in a slurred American accent. “If the rest of you don’t mind.”

Eyes turn toward Piers, who gropes for his own wand in his pocket. He was never much for duelling or he might have gone off to be an auror. There’s a bit more prestige in that kind of work, but it’s terribly dangerous and the pay has nothing on more administrative roles. He has aspirations beyond dying in a ridiculous — in his eyes — fuss over some nonsense on the continent.

“Excuse me, sir,” Piers says. “But — if you don’t mind me asking — who are you?”

“No one that you know,” the man says. “Mr. Thornewick, I presume?”

An empty seat from the edge of the room slides across the floor into a gap between Piers’ best mate Nigel and Gatwick from accounts. The stranger seats himself directly across from Piers and reaches across the table with his left hand.

“Percival Graves,” the man says.

After a moment of hesitation, Piers reaches out and shakes that hand. Percival squeezes his hand slightly, enough to show his grip without crushing Piers’ fingers.

“Any relation to Morgane Graves?” Piers asks. “She and I were the same year at Hogwarts.”

“Perhaps,” Percival says. “Maybe we’re cousins a few hundred years removed.”

Piers nods. “What can I do for you, Mr. Graves?”

Percival Graves folds his hand against his chin and strokes his beard with his elbow firmly planted against the table.

“You know,” he begins, “it’s interesting you should mention the English Graves family, because I was curious how well you know your American history.”

Piers laughs, but Percival Graves does not even smile. Even to Piers, he does not look like a man who smiles much. Lucibelle, who is certainly the more romantic and fanciful one in this coupling, wonders if the man sitting across from her fiancé has ever smiled in his life.

“I think I’ll take my leave then,” Gatwick says. “I was never much for history.”

“See you on Monday,” he adds.

The rest of the table looks at each other. “I think I’ll be going.”

Lucibelle links her arm with Peirs’ and Nigel stays nailed to his seat beside Percival Graves, though he moves slightly to the left when the man next to him departs.

Percival glances over his shoulder to watch the last retreating back, then turns back to Piers Thornewick.

“As I was saying,” he says.

“No,” Piers says. “I didn’t do too well on my OWLs for history, Mr. Graves, and they don’t test on the colonies.”

“That’s a pity, Mr. Thornewick,” he says. “Because if you knew even a little of America’s history, you’d known that the American branch of the Graves family has quite a reputation.”

“Does it?” Lucibelle asks.

“It does,” Percival tells her.

He adjusts his hands upon the table, showing the scars across his knuckles. Piers has seen such scars before on the hands of some of the Ministry’s most hardened aurors, but he does not know what causes them. However his fiancée Lucibelle volunteers some of her time at St. Mungo’s and her grip on Piers tightens with fear. It’s not that the Cruciatus curse causes such wounds, but that its victims will do almost anything to make the pain stop.

Only Nigel, who at this moment rises from his seat, has ever tried to speak to the older aurors who still work for the Ministry. A few pints in and Nigel will try to talk to anyone. Years ago, when he was just a few months from his graduation, an auror with only one good eye and about two thirds of a nose told him that the scars on his hands were from his own teeth. And the eye? Well, he’d yanked it out himself.

It hadn’t made the pain stop, the auror told Nigel.

“Now both England and her colonies in America — in fact, most of Europe — experienced a period of witch trials,” Percival says. “But England, of course, had the Ministry and other bodies of law to prevent your muggles, as you call them, from causing any chaos in this island’s well establish magical community.”

Piers nods his very square face. His brows draw together as he tries to understand any subtext in what Percival tells him.

His knees shaking, Nigel sees himself out of the room and then the establishment. He stops only to empty his stomach into one of the potted plants at Tassle’s entryway.

“America had no such thing,” Percival says. “It was, in many ways, every witch for his or her self. Some even found great opportunities in this muggle violence. Have a sister who wants to marry a half-blood or, worse, one of the savage natives? Why not sell her out to the neighboring Protestants as a witch? Fire is an easy thing for any witch to protect herself, but hanging? Beheading? Slightly less so.”

Lucibelle lifts her hand to her mouth.

“And you lot still keep house elves, don’t you?” Percival asks. “That’s understandably less popular across the pond after certain scourers took to buying and selling witches and wizards of, shall we say, darker complexions to other wizards.”

Lucibelle turns her face away into her fiancée’s shoulder.

“You’re upsetting my girl,” Piers says.

“She should be upset,” Percival says.

“Sir,” Piers says.

“No,” Percival says, lifting one hand. “I’m done with that talk — almost.”

“You are done now, Mr. Graves.”

“I’ll be done when I’m done, Mr. Thornewick,” Percival tells him.

“Those unscrupulous many were known as Scourers,” Percival says. “And my forefather was among the few witches who stood against them.”

“Ah,” Piers says.

“So I come to you today in that spirit, Mr. Thornewick,” Percival says.

“What spirit would that be?” Piers asks, with his forehead all twisted up as though his small mind is being tortured.

“You’ve expressed some questionable political views, Mr. Thornewick,” Percival says. “Certainly not all too popular, but not yet treasonous.”

Piers snorts and pushes his shoulders back. To her credit, Lucibelle digs in her fingernails so that they catch in the sleeves of Piers’ robe. She hisses her fiancée’s name into his collar.

“I could inform your employer,” Percival says. “But that’s hardly my bone of contention with you, sir.”

“Then what the hell is your contention, Mr. Graves?” Piers asks. His fist collides with the table top, but Percival does not even blink.

“Credence Barebone,” Percival says.

Piers blinks and draws back his fist. His thin lips hang open like a gasping fish. His tongue moves inside his mouth, but he does not speak.

“You work with him, do you not?” Percival asks. “Or rather, you make it near impossible for him to do his job.”

Leaning across the table, Percival puts out both his hands with his battered wand pressed beneath his scarred hands. His dark eyes bore into Piers’ square and fleshy face like a pair of heated iron needles, all the worse for their unevenness.

“You will never again so much as speak to Mr. Barebone,” Percival says. “If he looks at you, you will lower your gaze and move out of his way. You will do your paper-pushing Ministry job, you fascist piece of shit, and you will stay out of his way.”

“Why the Hell —” Piers begins to say.

A few sparks emit from Percival’s dark wand and scorch the table cloth. Piers shuts his mouth.

“You will do this,” Percival says. “Or I will make the things my forefathers did to the Scourers look like a fucking tea party, Mr. Thornewick.”

Lucibelle’s shoulders begin to shake. Her knuckles are white.

“Do you understand me?” Percival asks.

“I understand that you’re threatening me, Mr. Graves,” Piers says.

“You fool,” Lucibelle snaps.

She lifts her blonde head. “You fool!”

“Lucy, be quiet!” Piers shouts at her.

“You’re an idiot, Piers Thornewick!” she says. “A damned idiot!”

“Lucibelle,” he says.

“You think you can reason with this man? You can’t!” she insists. “Just shut your mouth and leave Mr. Barebone alone! He never even did anything to you. Is trading jinxes as though he’s a Slytherin worth losing your job? Your life?”

“No, Lucibelle, but it’s not —” Piers tries to say.

“This man is threatening you, Piers, but unlike some hooligan at the pub, he _means_ it,” she says.

“Your lovely lady is correct, Mr. Thornewick,” Percival says. “I do mean it.”

“Don’t be outrageous,” Piers says.

Percival lifts his wand. 

“You’re not a quicker draw than Mr. Barebone, as I hear,” he says. “Do you think you’re faster than me?”

A bit of green threatens at the end of that long, dark wand. Piers’ square face goes pale.

“I didn’t think so,” Percival says. The corner of his mouth begins to lift and both Lucibelle and Piers see how only part of the man’s face seems capable of movement. The other side of Percival’s mouth stays locked in a stiff frown even when he smiles.

He pushes against the table with both hands to lift himself up.

“Have a lovely day, Miss Lucibelle,” he says before he goes.

After a bit of a lover’s spat during which Lucibelle threatens to end their engagement and asks Piers what he really thinks of her sister who married a half-blood, the couple departs the Tassle’s establishment with heavier hearts and lighter wallets. She makes him swear again before they go their separate ways that afternoon that he will not so much as look at Credence Barebone — upon pain of death and never being kissed again. He kisses her pale cheeks and swears it on his heart.

But Credence walks into Piers’ office the next day expecting a fight. He expects a fight every single day that he has to walk through accounts for a week. That fight never materializes. Nigel takes Credence’s reports and requests with only pleasantries.

“How’s Mr. Scamander?” Nigel asks.

“Well,” Credence says, looking over his shoulder at Piers who bends over his desk.

When he returns, Newt asks him, “How bad was it?”

“Not bad at all,” Credence says. 

“No, uh, problems?” Newt asks.

“No,” Credence says. He sits at his desk and feels somewhat at a loss. 

None of the Creatures Office’s paperwork goes missing after that month and Credence makes a point to be timely with all of his requests. His reports still miss a few deadlines, but no one mentions it. In fact, almost no one mentions anything to Credence. After nearly a year of whispers behind his back and a few open insults to his intelligence, the people around the Ministry are almost nice to him.

“I think I’m settling in,” Credence tells Newt as Summer moves humidly over London.

On that same day, the ministers of England’s magical and non-magical governments hold a meeting of the highest secrecy. At this meeting, they bring the many words of advice from all their various administrators. Together, they decide what they must do. Three days into the next month, England goes to war.

One of the Ministry’s employees, distracted by the matter of getting her three young children out of London to stay with her parents in the country, delivers a letter intended for the desk of Theseus Scamander to the desk of Newton Scamander. She does not even notice her mistake as she hurries away on her next errand.

To save time, Newt opens his mail while also reviewing Augustus Worme’s notes on his latest revisions. He does not see that he has opened a letter meant for his brother until much too late. With his quill between his teeth, Newt tries to speak to Credence.

“What?” Credence asks, turning around.

“Did you know Percival Graves is in London?” Newt asks, after removing the quill from his mouth.

Credence scowls. His loose dark braid has come half undone and a few curls fall against his cheek. He has ink smudged at the corner of his mouth from touching his pen nib and then his face.

“Why would I know that?” he asks.

Newt looks at the letter on his desk. “Because he’s writing to my brother about you.”

Credence’s chair does not have room to fall to the floor, so it only knocks into the front of Newt’s desk instead. Credence’s foot tangles on the rungs and he nearly falls. With both hands, he snatches the letter off Newt’s desk. His knee rests on the seat of his fallen chair as he leans forward with his entire body.

Newt watches Credence’s face in the same way he might regard a nest of Acromantulas — or any other creature which he is very fond of despite its capacity for incredible violence. But the only part of Credence that moves is his eyes as he reads.

He sets the letter down when he finishes it, then stands and fixes his chair.

“It’s him,” Credence says.

“It’s always been him.”

He picks up the letter again to check for an address. When he does not find one, Credence walks out of the office.

When Newt’s heart stops pounding, he licks his lip. He gets to his feet and wonders whether he would be better off placing a fire call to Queenie Goldstein or Seraphina Picquery. Certainly, Tina would be the best person to speak with, but he does not know where she might be at this exact moment. He hopes it’s somewhere close to London.

Theseus Scamander looks up from his work when his secretary opens the door to his office.

“There’s a man here from the Creature’s Office,” he says.

“My brother?” Theseus asks.

“No,” Alain says. “His secretary perhaps?”

Theseus’ shoulders sink slightly when he sighs. “Let him in.”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Scamander,” a man with a soft voice and long dark hair says. His accent identifies him as an American, but Newton has so many American friends these days. Theseus supposes it’s no longer a secret even — now that they are officially at war. Newton must be too busy to handle whatever this matter is. Perhaps he will even surrender that ruse of his creatures business.

But, of course, spies are needed even more when one is openly at war.

“Good afternoon,” Theseus says.

“We received a report through our office from, ah,” the man stops. He looks toward the ceiling and touches his temple.

“Perseus?” the man tries. “Was it Perseus Graves?”

“Percival?” Theseus asks. He feels his brows pull together. Why would Percival be writing to Newt’s office? Doesn’t he have a direct connection with the Americans? Has it been compromised?

“Yes,” the man says. “That was it, Percival Graves.”

“Would you mind taking a seat,” Theseus says.

“Not at all,” the man says. He pulls back the chair in front of Theseus’ desk with one hand and sits down. He must be even taller than Newton and just as narrow. Like most Americans that Theseus knows, he does not bother with robes. But that hair certainly has a British flair to it. He must have lived on the isle for some time.

“Would you mind holding this,” Theseus says, picking up a glass globe from the top of his desk.

“Not at all,” the man says. The glass begins to glow in blue.

“Do you really work for Newton’s office?” Theseus asks.

“Yes,” the man says. “I’m his junior.”

The globe remains a steady blue.

“And Percival Graves wrote to that office?” Theseus asks.

“We received a letter from him,” the man says.

The globe glows even brighter somehow.

“He didn’t leave us an address to reach him,” the man says. “But he did say that he is in London and I was wondering how we could reach him.”

Theseus looks at the brilliant, shining blue in that glass and scowls. Even if the man is telling the truth, he cannot help but sense that something is amiss.

“Is this to do with…” Theseus taps the side of his nose.

“I’m not sure,” the man says. He leans toward Theseus’ desk and lowers his voice. “I believe it may be a personal matter.”

That damn globe stays a steady blue. Theseus can only sigh. He shuffles a few things on his desk to give himself a moment to think. The man across from him sits up straight but does not move. He does not look around at the items in Theseus’ office.

“I’m not comfortable giving Mr. Graves’ personal address to anyone,” Theseus says. “You must understand, there are certain… There are some matters of delicacy at this time.”

“Of course,” the man says. “I understand. Would there be somewhere I might be able to meet with him, Mr. Graves?”

“He likes to take his dinner at the White Wyvren,” Theseus says. “Do you know it?”

“I do not,” the man says. “But I’m certain I could find it.”

“It’s up a flight of stairs in Knockturn,” Theseus says. “I think the establishment beneath is might be… well, a place of ill repute.”

The man’s face does not move at all at the suggestions of dark magic or prostitution. But who knows what sort of company Newton keeps these days.

“Mr. Graves likes to take his dinner at around three,” Theseus says.

“In the afternoon?” the man asks.

“In the morning,” Theseus says. Who is he to criticize the company his brother keeps? He’s the one who writes weekly to Percival Graves.

“Thank you, Mr. Scamander,” the man says. “You’ve been incredibly helpful to me.”

Before he leaves, the man sets the globe down on the edge of Theseus’ desk. Only after he has shut the door behind him, does Theseus pick the globe up. He tests it with a few lies which turn it bright red. All the same, Theseus still scratches out a quick note of warning to Percival.

Owls go flying. Fire calls are made. News travels quickly. 

In her apartment in New York City, Queenie gasps. She tells Newt the second after where her sister is — though it’s supposed to be highly classified information.

“I’ll get to London as soon as I can,” Tina says, when he gets through to her. “Go find Credence. Please, Newt.”

“So you know,” Seraphina Picquery says from Boston. “I told him it was a bad idea, but…”

She shrugs one shoulder.

When Newt goes out looking for Credence, he does not even think to check Knockturn Alley. For a few hours before it closes, Credence allows Mr. Caractacus Burke to tell him the grisly story behind the rib cage, carved full of runic symbols and dusted with ash, hanging from the ceiling of Borgin and Burkes. It is Mr. Burke’s hope that Credence will tell him more about the diadem he says his friend got from her mother — the Melusine.

“You’re certain it was the Melusine,” Mr. Burke asks repeatedly.

Credence leans very close to the man and looks him directly in the eye. “I’ve seen her scales.”

Mr. Burke smiles and Credence cannot help but recognize that look.

He does not so much as offer the man Adva’s name or the country where she lives. He tells him that she’s Scottish before he departs.

At the whore house beneath the White Wyvern, Credence looks over a few ivory phalluses and buys a bottle of wine to take back to his room in the nicer part of London. 

“I don’t really care for women,” he tells one of the girls. 

She calls him something rude, but he can only nod. “I mean, for a while I thought I was in love with a friend of mine. And then there was my landlady when I was living in France.”

“Ah,” she says. “Comment l’avez-vous vécu?”

He spends some of that money he’s saved by not having to pay his rent to talk about France with a girl he’s not interested in fucking for the last few hours before three in the morning. At the end of it, she clutches his hands in both of hers and begs him not to go. She cannot stop smiling with one dimple in her round cheeks. Reeking of flowers, she embraces him and presses her powdered cheek against his jacket.

“Bon courage, Credence!” she says, pronouncing his name in the same way that Adva used to.

He goes up the stairs to the White Wyvern with a certain lightness in his heels. For all that he would like to be able to do things for himself, it’s true that the past decade of Credence’s life has been one of incredible comforts. He has been frustrated only by the mystery of his benefactor. Who would care so much about what luxuries Credence Barebone has in his life?

Apparently the man who survived months of torture from a dark wizard and then came to beg forgiveness from Credence Barebone at his most unforgiving.

He pushes open the door of the pub and instantly spots Percival Graves by the width of his shoulders and the cut of his coat. It hasn’t changed in over a decade. Credence’s hands shake slightly at his sides, but he easily moves around the empty tables. His heels make no sound against the wood floor. He swallows. The corners of his mouth almost lift.

At a close distance, the grey of Percival’s beard does not hide the scars on one side of his face. He has grey hairs now even in his eyebrows, which seem to have gotten thicker. Still, Credence would know him in a crowd anywhere.

There is hardly a crowd at this hour. 

The witching hour, Credence thinks. He’s certain the woman who once demanded he call her “Ma” told him that. He no longer remembers the sound of her voice, except in his worst dreams.

“Credence,” Mr. Graves says. The paralysis on one side of his mouth has changed the way he speaks, but it’s much less noticeable after so many years. The eyelid on that side, though, still droops to expose its wet, red lining. The eye looks greyed with age; its whites turned yellow like old porcelain. 

“I was warned you might be coming.”

“But you’re here,” Credence says as he takes the seat beside Percival.

The toothmarks on his knuckles, which oozed and bled the last time that Credence saw him, have healed into pink scars. Credence wonders if he has trouble forming a fist at times. The cold bothers Credence most of all, especially when it’s dry. The stitched up parts of the man’s face have healed into jagged white lines.

“I am,” Percival Graves says. “I thought, well, if you’re going to the trouble of bothering Theseus, I should give you a second chance to kill me.”

Credence rests his scarred hand on the bartop beside Percival’s.

“That was a long time ago,” Credence says. 

“Not that long,” Percival says.

“A third of my life,” Credence says.

At that, Percival looks away and lifts his pint. He moves it to the working side of his mouth and drinks carefully. Credence watches him.

“Is the food here any good?” he asks.

“It’s not the Ritz,” Percival says.

Credence huffs slightly through his nose, something that might pass for a polite laugh. It makes Percival look at him again.

“You can order on my tab, if you want,” he says, setting down his pint.

“I think you’ve paid for me enough, Mr. Graves,” Credence says. “Would you mind terribly if I repaid the favor?”

**Author's Note:**

> How many things can I post before I finish the next part of the stripper AU? Find out at jeffgoldblumsmulletinthe90s.tumblr.com or twitter @jffgldblm90s


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